“Like they want to know,” said Rodney, “if we can live in a world in which everything that was once hard and solid has become like Jell-O and everything that was once soft and squishy has become hard and solid.”
“Or if we can live in a world with millions of bubbles,” added Wayne. “Or in a world where people speak in numbers instead of words. Isn’t that right, Professor?”
“Right on the money, Wayne.”
(Wayne smiled. He had been right on the money!)
“Of course those who are conducting these experiments, boys— they probably never realized that they would have Professor Johnson and Rodney and Wayne McCall to contend with. For every time a new experiment has been put into place, there we are — like flies in their ointment — busy at work on a new machine that will end the experiment and put things right back to normal!”
“Oh, I’ll bet they’re not happy about that at all!” laughed Wayne a little raucously. “And who cares!”
Rodney and the Professor could not help laughing along with Wayne. “Hand me those pliers, Wayne,” said Professor Johnson with a chuckle.
Rodney’s gaze now went to one corner of the laboratory where the Professor had been constructing a different machine. “How is the Force Field-De-Ionizer coming along?” he asked.
“Not as well as I would like. It is a most difficult thing to learn the make-up of a force field when it is invisible. And without a proper chemical analysis of the molecular structure of the field itself, I cannot hope to build a machine to remove it.”
“And you believe,” said Wayne, “that the force field, which keeps us from leaving Pitcherville, was put up by the same people who are doing the experiments on this town?”
“I do, Wayne. What better way to keep the guinea pigs of these experiments—us! — from escaping from our town-sized cage! Yet I am hopeful that it will only be a matter of time before I am able to solve the riddle of the force field. For is it not turned on and off at times and in certain places to send the radio and television signals on to us? Or to place the things we need to survive upon the shelves of the town warehouse? Say, Wayne, what makes you think that it is people who are conducting these experiments?”
“Who else could it be?” asked Wayne, his eyes rolled upward in thought. “It couldn’t be horses or — or elephants — or Venus Fly Traps doing this to us.” (Wayne was fascinated with Venus Fly Traps and all other plants that had the ability to take revenge upon members of the Animal Kingdom, and so he sought whenever possible to bring a Venus Fly Trap into a conversation no matter how very much it did not have to do with Venus Fly Traps!)
“Did you ever stop to think that perhaps our experimenters might not be earthly at all!” posed the Professor.
“You mean that they could be Martians?” asked Wayne.
“Or maybe beings from some planet we’ve never even heard of before!” marveled Rodney.
“I have no idea who it could be. Perhaps we should start to gather the clues that will someday give us that answer. What, for example, do we know of our situation here besides the fact that we are subjected to these periodic calamities?”
Rodney thought for a moment and then said, “That we are cut off from the rest of the world.”
The Professor nodded.
“And that we cannot send letters or make telephone calls to anyone who lives outside of Pitcherville,” continued Rodney.
“And nobody calls us,” sighed Wayne, “or sends us letters. Or birthday cards. Or Christmas cards or anything.”
Rodney nodded and brought forth a sigh of his own. He was thinking of how much he missed his father and how the force field kept him from going to look for him. But it was not just their father whom the twin brothers missed; they also missed having a mother around — for Mrs. McCall had died when they were born. They missed all of their relatives who lived outside of Pitcherville whom they wondered if they would ever see again: Grandpa and Grandma McCall (who was the sister of their Great Aunt Mildred) and their Uncle Doug, who was a traveling magician, and even their father’s friend Trixie, who was a dancer and would sometimes come to town and laugh too loud and get on Aunt Mildred’s nerves. There were a lot of people whom Rodney and Wayne missed seeing and whom they would miss even more if they were destined to live the rest of their lives trapped in Pitcherville.
And there it sat: the Force Field-De-Ionizer all in pieces, because the Professor had little clue as to how he should put it all together in such a way as to do the town some good and remove its invisible fence forever.
“So that’s the Professor’s theory, Petey,” said Rodney, summing things up. “And he could be wrong, but it sounds like as good a theory as any other that I’ve heard.”
Petey agreed, and said that his mother would be glad to hear it. It would be good for him to give her a possible reason behind all the Troubles — to give her some theory that had nothing to do with sunspots (which few people believed anyway). But Petey said this using only words that did not contain a “b.”
“Of course there is one other thing that Mom wants to know,” said Petey. “She’d like to know when the next experiment is going to happen. She said she wasn’t very prepared last time, and doesn’t want that to happen again.”
Rodney shrugged. “Sometimes we have two whole weeks between calamities,” he said.
“But gee, other times,” Wayne joined in, “there’s hardly even time to take a good breath.”
“A good what?” asked Petey.
“A good inhalation,” said Rodney, thinking of a “b”-less word that means “breath.”
The school bell rang. This meant that it was now time for all the children who had been talking and chasing one another upon the front lawn to go inside and begin their school day. Rodney and Wayne didn’t hurry, for they knew what would be waiting for them in their classroom, and wanted a little time to prepare what they would say. And, of course, their guess was right on the money; there it was: a cake — a big peach-frosted cake baked by their teacher Miss Lyttle “to thank you boys and the Professor for ending yet another town catastrophe! Have a piece, boys. We’ll wait to begin class until after you’re done.”
CHAPTER FOUR
In which Rodney and Wayne wake to discover that they have been sleeping like babies because they ARE babies!
Nothing new happened for several days. Each morning Rodney and Wayne woke to a bright and sunny room, with nothing whatsoever out of place. Down to breakfast they would go to eat their cinnamon biscuits and their cinnamon-sprinkled grapefruit (which, though it sounded strange, actually tasted pretty good), and to gather their books for school, and then to jump upon their bikes. Petey would be waiting, patient as usual. Mr. Craft’s aqua-colored Buick would pass the boys on its way to the school, and Becky would roll down her window and wave and sometimes she would shout, “Don’t you love this good, beautiful, normal day!”
Some days the three boys were joined on their Schwinn cruisers by Rodney and Wayne’s friend Grover. Grover was a stocky boy in the twin’s eighth-grade class whose mother was Professor Johnson’s housekeeper and cook, Mrs. Ferrell. Grover was always trying hard to lose weight. In fact, the Professor had built an exercise machine for him that was like no other exercise machine in the world. It was part rowing machine and part stationary bicycle, but also had a medicine ball that came out of its own accord and pushed at him here and there, which Grover had to fend off when he wasn’t looking. He never used the machine without acquiring a bruise or two, and finally, the Professor was forced to concede that the “Grovercizer” needed further work. It was Grover’s dream to lose weight and not have to shop in the husky young men’s section of Lowengold’s Department Store, but he would prefer to do it without acquiring bruises.